


Admitting You Have a Problem

by townshend



Category: My Bloody Valentine (2009)
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2010-09-17
Updated: 2010-09-17
Packaged: 2017-10-11 22:15:42
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 455
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/117680
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/townshend/pseuds/townshend





	Admitting You Have a Problem

"I know how to do my fucking job, alright?"

Those words were the end of Tom Hanniger. He watched Harry Warden disappear down the mine shaft with a sneer on his face. If human beings could get away with ending one life on this planet, just _one_ , without consequence, Tom knew his choice would be Harry Warden.

Maybe that's why, that night, he was careless. Maybe he'd done it on purpose. Countless couch-doctors and idiot quacks had tried to dig into Tom's mind about it, tried to make him admit maybe he felt guilt because he _was_ at fault.

The first step to recovery was admitting you had a problem.

That was easy for them to fucking say -- when the lights went out, all they saw were their cushy homes, their trophy wives, their two-point-five kids and dreams about what brand of plasma screen TV they were going to buy the next day.

Lights out on the psych ward meant something different for Tom. He'd stare at the white brick wall and when he closed his eyes he saw it all again. Valentine's Day, all the people he let come to the mine, _his_ mine (no, damnit, his _father's_ mine), and Harry Warden. Back in that old suit, back with that old pick-axe, fucking _back_ at all. He wanted revenge. He wanted Tom Hanniger.

Instead he'd killed twenty-five innocent-enough teenagers who'd just been looking for a little fun on a goddamned greeting card generated holiday, and Tom had survived.

Now, instead of rotting in Hell where he belonged, he got to sit on couches listening to doctors encourage him to "dig deeper".

Them letting him out was the best thing that ever happened to Tom -- and, originally, ever going back to that damn town was the last thing he'd wanted. But the old man died, and...

Something had to give.

So he went back. And in going back, it was like he'd woken something up that had been long-buried deep inside -- not in the mine, but in _himself._

The first step to recovery was admitting you had a problem. The second step was to let that problem set free a bloodbath on the town, a bloodbath that wouldn't end, no matter what.

And when he ducked out of the mine, past the rescuers and past the police officers and into his car, he drove until he ran out of gas, trying to ignore the feeling of somebody sitting in the passenger's seat.

"You're not there," he told the silence, but when hands tensed against the steering wheel, they weren't his any more, and all Tom could do was watch and marvel at how far the drop down was off the side of the mountain road.


End file.
